


All The Years I've Known You

by project_break



Category: Super Junior-M
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Childhood Friends, Fluff, Friendship/Love, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Possessive Behavior, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 22:25:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1363957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/project_break/pseuds/project_break
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun grow up together, but when Mimi seems to grow away, Kuixian accepts that he wants them to grow into something more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All The Years I've Known You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lyn7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyn7/gifts).



> Hi, OP! I started out following your prompt and, um, well. It took on a life of its own. It was originally going to be super fluffy, now it's only intermittently fluffy. I tried. OTL
> 
> In all seriousness, though, aside from the fact that it's not 100% fluff, all the time, the major points of your prompt are here. I wasn't sure if you wanted just friendship fic, or an eventual romance~ so I went with what the characters wanted. I hope you enjoy it! ^_^

Kyuhyun is six. He puts a newly unearthed worm on a sand spade, aims carefully, and catapults it into the new boy Heechul-hyung said is called Seasoning. Stupid name.

Seasoning’s eyes go really big when the worm hits him, and he screams like a baby, falling over into the sandbox on his face and wiggling away through the sand as fast as he can, like he’s a big dumb worm, too. It only hit his shirt sleeve. What a whimp.

But because Ryeowook-hyung is a teacher’s pet and a total grass, Kyuhyun has to stand in front of the headmistress and his mom and Seasoning’s mom and tell stupid Seasoning that he’s sorry.

“I’m sorry you’re a scaredy cat,” Kyuhyun mutters petulantly, looking at the floor and not at Seasoning’s tear-streaked, sandy face.

“ _Cho Kyuhyun_ ,” his mom and the headmistress say at the same time, and Kyuhyun’s mom looks over at Seasoning’s mom and moves her mouth without saying any words. Then she gives Kyuhyun a big glare which tells him that he’s going to spend the rest of his _life_ in his room if he doesn’t apologise properly.

“Fine,” Kyuhyun grumps, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m sorry I threw a worm at you,” he says, and the next thing he knows, stupid Seasoning is hugging him, like a gross girly _girl_ or something.

“That’s okay!” Seasoning says, way too loud right near Kyuhyun’s ear. “We’re gonna be friends!”

Kyuhyun isn’t so sure about that, but his mom is, and after five arranged playdates he gives up trying to fight it.

 

So, you see, Kyuhyun really had no choice in the matter of their friendship. It was basically compulsory. Or, at least, that’s what he likes to tell people when they make Remarks about how he and Mimi are together a lot. Mimi just beams and hugs him some more. Some things never change.

Lots of things _do_ change over the years, however:

 **\-- Kyuhyun** learns that Seasoning’s name is not actually Seasoning – that it’s Chinese, like where his parents come from – and that his real name is _Zhou Mi_. Kyuhyun isn’t any better at pronouncing his family name than Heechul-hyung is, though, so even though he knows it’s rude he drops it altogether and calls him _Mimi_. Sometimes he adds on a “hyung” if they’re in public or he feels like being a brat. Mimi accepts this with grace and doesn’t even mind when Kyuhyun back-sasses him in front of his same-age friends.

Contrary to being angry, in fact, Mimi jumps right on the idea of best-friend nicknames and starts to call Kyuhyun exclusively by his Chinese name, _Kuixian._ Kyuhyun gets so used to it that one time Mimi when calls him by his real name in the hall at school, Kyuhyun doesn’t react.

 **\-- Mimi** gets tall. Like, really, ridiculously tall. Kyuhyun gets tall, too – taller than most of his hyungs, even – but Mimi is even taller than him. By the time Kyuhyun is thirteen and Mimi is fifteen, Mimi is 178 centimeters tall and still growing like some kind of ridiculous, weedy, tree person. Kyuhyun informs Mimi about his resemblance to an anemic redwood, and Mimi pats 167 centimeter tall Kyuhyun on the top of his head and tells him that he’s still young, he’ll catch up.

 **(** Mimi turns out to be one of those people who’s so upbeat most of the time, it’s hard to tell when he’s being sarcastic. Kyuhyun turns out to not appreciate this aspect of his personality.)

 **\-- Kyuhyun** (who spends most of his elementary and middle school years in a heavy sulk which has mostly to do with believing that he’s weird looking and _knowing_ that he’s pants at sports and looks even weirder when he’s forced to try and pretend he’s not) takes a singing class at the local community center in his last year of middle school because Mimi pesters him into it – “I can’t go aloooone, Kuixian!” – and discovers something that he loves and is actually good at besides Starcraft.

This realization happily coincides, more or less, with puberty finally deciding to leave Kyuhyun alone, and a surprising discovery that the girls in his age range do not actually find him completely repellent. In fact, in conjunction with his new-found musical abilities, Kyuhyun’s face ends up making him more popular than his personality ever could on its own.

“You have a wonderful personality!” Mimi says, sounding very, very wounded on Kyuhyun's behalf when Kyuhyun mentions this interesting phenomenon one day.

“You’re the only one who thinks that,” Kyuhyun says, throwing a pillow at his face.

“That’s not true! And even if it was, wouldn’t me thinking so be enough?”

He might be teasing, Kyuhyun’s not sure, but, in point of fact, the answer to that question is “yes.”

 **\-- Mimi** also becomes popular. It’s pretty obvious why: he’s a nice person. He’s outgoing, friendly, non-judgmental, patient, and an attentive student. Girls collapse into pieces at his feet when he smiles at them and asks with genuine interest after their mother/brother/cat/audition results/game scores/latest shopping finds. Teachers love that he’s an eager participant, and even though his marks aren’t the best of the best (Kyuhyun’s got him there, at least) he works hard and he asks questions when he needs help.

Kyuhyun discovers that he doesn’t like that Mimi’s so popular. It’s not that he doesn’t like the things about him which make him so popular with the hoi polloi, or that he resents the fact that Mimi’s new friends think he’s a weird choice for Mimi’s best friend (it’s true, after all, taking their personalities at face value). No, Kyuhyun doesn’t like that Mimi’s so popular because he doesn’t like having to share him.

Even though Kyuhyun himself is popular in the sense of being hero-worshiped and desired by a sizable chunk of the population of his high school, he’s never tried to gain the friendship of any of his admirers because he doesn’t feel like he needs any more friends. He’s got Heechul-hyung, and Ryeowook-hyung, and Sungmin-hyung and Henry – for videogames, singing, music in general, and English lessons respectively – and then he has Mimi, who’s his oldest, best, all-purpose friend, and Kyuhyun doesn’t see why he should need anyone else. 

Plus, Kyuhyun knew Mimi first. He was the first person Mimi met on his first day in their school all those years ago. He has dibs. It is incredibly annoying, after years of being able to assume that he’d be available, to find slowly that his timetable is becoming more and more unpredictable, that if Kyuhyun asks him to come over and hang out on one of the days when he's not supposed to study, Mimi probably already has plans with one of his millions of other friends. Kyuhyun actually has to start _scheduling_ his time with his best friend. It’s ridiculous. 

Also, also: Kyuhyun doesn’t trust these new friends of Mimi’s. Not one bit. He doesn’t believe that they’re permanent. They don’t know him as well as Kyuhyun does; they haven’t known him as long. They like him for what they see on the surface, but what if they find out something they won’t like? Kyuhyun’s sure that they’d throw him under a bus at the first sign of trouble

 **\-- Kyuhyun’s** paranoia about Mimi’s fragile relationship to his new friends is not unfounded. When Mimi is thirteen and Kyuhyun is eleven, Mimi tells him a very important secret, and tells him that he can’t tell anyone. Not anyone. Not even Heechul-hyung, who seems to know _everything_ anyway.

 “What did you do? Did you kill someone?” Kyuhyun asks, eyes wide. _How cool would it be if I was friends with a serial killer?! But wait, what if Mimi tries to murder me? He wouldn't do that, right? We're friends!_

“I… no. Kuixian, I… I like boys.” Mimi is playing with the edge of the blanket on his bed, concentrating on folding that one scrap of fabric over and over on itself, and definitely _not_ looking at Kyuhyun.

“Uh. Okay,” Kyuhyun says, feeling only slightly let down on the serial killer front, but unsure of how this is big and/or bad news. “And?”

“I _like_ boys.”

“I like boys, too. Obviously we’re better than gross girls.”

“No, like, _like._ Like kissing.” _Oh._

“…oh.”

“Kuixian?” Mimi does look up at him now, and Kyuhyun meets his gaze with uncertainty.

“That’s…that’s weird,” Kyuhyun settles on finally, because at age eleven he’s not entirely sure how the whole “liking people” thing really works, only he knows boys aren’t supposed to like boys, and that boys who like boys are usually considered gross, and if people find out about them, they call them bad names and beat them up.

“Are you angry?” No, Kyuhyun’s not angry. He doesn’t feel like beating Mimi up or calling him bad names; he doesn’t really see a reason to. But he does feel awkward, because why would Mimi tell him that? There’s only one reason he can really think of.

“Do you like me?” Kyuhyun asks, squinting at Mimi a little as though shrinking his field of vision will somehow make it better for detecting honesty.

“Huh?”

“Like, do you like me? Like kissing?”

Mimi, who’s already red and anxious and looking at Kyuhyun with giant eyes, filled with tears that look like they could fall at any second, gets even redder and looks even more panicked.

“No! I, no. No, not like that. No. You’re my _friend_ , Kuixian. It’s not like that with you.”

“Then why’d you tell me?”

“You’re my best friend,” Mimi says in a small voice, and then he _does_ start to cry. “I just wanted to be honest with you. You know everything else about me, I—” he breaks off into hiccupping sobs and Kyuhyun swallows his pride and gets up off the floor to sit next to him on the bed, putting an arm around his shoulders and squeezing.

Mimi leans into him, somehow manages to get his head to rest on Kyuhyun’s shoulder despite their already obvious height difference, and aside from the crying Kyuhyun doesn’t feel that anything is really that different between them.

“How long have you liked boys for?” Kyuhyun asks once Mimi’s started breathing like he’s not going to expire on the spot.

“I don’t know?” Mimi says, in a small voice. “For a while? Maybe I kind of thought I did, when I was your age? But lately there’s been this guy at school, and I… well, I _know_ now.”

Kyuhyun doesn’t ask about who the guy at school is, because he doesn’t think he’s ready to know that yet. But he thinks back to the past couple years, tries to determine if anything has been different about their friendship, and he can’t think of anything. If Mimi has liked boys for that long and he’s been normal for that long, then Kyuhyun knowing doesn’t mean anything about Mimi has really changed. It’s just that Kyuhyun knows about a new part of what hasn’t changed. That’s pretty reassuring, actually. Now they’re even better friends than they used to be, because now they really _do_ know everything about each other.

“Don’t worry, Mimi,” he says, and gives his best friend an extra little squeeze for support. “I won’t tell anyone.”

 **\-- Kyuhyun** does, eventually, ask about the boy from school, even though it’s a couple of years later and it doesn’t really matter anymore. He feels bad about not asking at the time, for not offering to be there for his best friend to talk to, but he also knows that he may not have been very helpful then anyway, too confused to do much more than think, _This is so weird._

“Choi Siwon,” Mimi says, going red and talking into his hands. “Oh my god this is so embarrassing. I can’t believe I’m telling you.”

“Choi Siwon, huh?” Kyuhyun says. “Wow, you really picked a winner.”

“Don’t be mean!” Mimi exclaims, sparing a brief moment to glare at Kyuhyun in distress from between his fingers. “It was three years ago. And he was - he _is_ - really nice, and he’s good looking—”

“—and he doesn’t hate gay people because he refuses to acknowledge that they exist,” Kyuhyun finishes for him, giving him a poke with one of his chopsticks.

“I never said it was a _realistic_ crush,” Mimi says petulantly, grabbing the business end of Kyuhyun’s chopstick as it comes back toward him and wresting it from his grip.

“I don’t think you can really have a realistic crush,” Kyuhyun retorts, not realizing until it’s left his mouth that that probably hit home a lot harder than he meant it to. Mimi’s face drops and he sets Kyuhyun’s chopstick down on the table. “Shit, Mimi. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” Kyuhyun says, feeling guilt slam through him, almost paralyzing.

“No,” Mimi says slowly, looking at his hands. “It’s okay. It’s true.”

“It’s not. Okay? It’s not. I’m sure there’s someone out there for you. Maybe not Choi Siwon, or, like, anyone at our school but-”

“It’s fine, Kuixian. Really.”

“Promise me you won’t give up, okay?” Kyuhyun asks – asks because he’d never beg. “You have to promise me that you believe you’ll find someone, someday.” Even if the idea of some person, some other guy, arriving on the scene and usurping Kyuhyun’s spot as Mimi’s closest confidant, the person he lets the most into his life, burns painfully in an essential place in his heart, the idea of Mimi feeling unloved and isolated and lonely forever is far, far worse.

“Kuixian…” Mimi sounds so timeworn for a moment, so tired and oppressed by his secret, that thirteen year old Kyuhyun feels a part of himself panic with the crazy notion that they’re getting old too quickly, that soon their time together will have run out.

“Promise me,” he says, and he puts his hands over top of Mimi’s, still fidgeting on the table. It’s a weird, intimate type of gesture that he’s never made before, but the feeling of Mimi’s hand under his is steadying, somehow, and he doesn’t regret it, not here in the privacy of his kitchen, his empty apartment, where there’s no one to misunderstand what this means.

“Alright, Kuixian. I promise.”

 **\-- Mimi** never tells Kyuhyun about any other crushes he might get on boys at school or in town, though, although Kyuhyun knows that he must have them from time to time and he's plagued by a nagging guilt that only make him more possessive of Mimi’s time as a result. If Mimi notices it, he doesn’t say anything.

 

So ten years later, things have changed and things have stayed the same, and it’s early September. Mimi is eighteen and in his last year of high school, working hard to get into university, and Kyuhyun is sixteen and is ostensibly “conserving his energy” in preparation for the musical which starts production just after winter break, but is actually just spending a lot of time playing RPGs online with Heechul-hyung.

Kyuhyun’s voice lesson finishes and when he opens the door of the music room to go to lunch, he opens it right into Mimi, who goes down like a sack of twigs and sits on the floor, hand over his nose and a wounded expression on his face.

“Ow,” he moans nasally, and Kyuhyun crouches down beside him to inspect the damage.

“Move your hand,” he orders, rolling his eyes and moving Mimi’s hand for him when he isn’t forthcoming with action of his own volition. A moment’s observation reveals that Mimi is just reveling in the drama of the moment and is not, in fact, the recipient of any serious injury.

“How much time do I have left, doctor?” Mimi asks, feigning distress as Kyuhyun stands up and offers him a hand.

“Don’t be so melodramatic. You’re not even bleeding. What were you hiding behind the door for, anyway?”

“I got an A on my physics test, so I’m treating myself to a day of lunch without studying! I thought I’d just wait for you to finish so we could walk to the cafeteria together.”

Sufficiently dusted off, Mimi starts off down the hallway through the crowd of students going to their next classes, and Kyuhyun follows him. Kyuhyun got lucky this year, being assigned the same lunch period as Mimi. It’s only happened once before in all the years they’ve been going to school together.

Not that it’s really made much difference, though, what with all the studying for entrance exams that Mimi’s been doing during his only free period, which happens to be lunch. Kyuhyun’s only really been able to see him after school on the varying one to three weekdays that he doesn’t go to his hagwon or on the weekends, and then there’s still a chance there that one of Mimi’s New Friends will have already reserved him. This unexpected time together is a luxury and it improves Kyuhyun’s mood tenfold.

They make it to the cafeteria just before the bell rings, and the line for food is still blissfully short. Mimi chews his lip as he looks over the tables set up throughout the room.

“Where do you want to sit?” he asks.

Good question. Kyuhyun usually ends up sitting with the people he knows and tolerates the best. There’re two musical theatre guys, Lee Jinki and Kim Jonghyun, who he takes classes with and sees on a regular basis, Lee Donghae, who’s one of Heechul-hyung's pet dongsaengs, and Henry Lau, the transfer student who attached himself to Kyuhyun’s peer group when he arrived from Canada five years ago. Today, though, Kyuhyun would rather not sit with them. Donghae, Henry, and Jonghyun are all pretty close to Mimi, and they’ll dominate the conversation with him if they can get away with it. They don’t do it on purpose, but it happens, and if Kyuhyun’s got Mimi to himself for one hour this week, he’s not going to waste the opportunity.

There are a few completely empty tables on the far side of the room, but they’re boxed in by tables full of girls. More importantly, those girls are made up primarily of the type that are infatuated with Mimi, Kyuhyun or both, and sitting near them is going to make any kind of private conversation impossible.

“Outside?” Kyuhyun offers as a suggestion, not really seeing any other desirable option inside.

“Outside?”  Mimi repeats, raising an eyebrow and looking at Kyuhyun like he’s the one who got hit by the door and was temporarily stunned. “It’s raining. It’s too wet for that, don’t you think? We don’t even have our jackets with us.”

“Oh.” Right. The weather. Kyuhyun takes his food-filled tray from the lady behind the serving line and follows Mimi to the register.

“What about over there?” Mimi points across the room to a table Kyuhyun didn’t notice before, small and almost tucked into a corner. It’s kind of private, he supposes, and it would be ideal if it weren’t for the fact that it’s unfortunately close to the table where Choi Siwon and company are sitting. Kyuhyun doesn’t like being near Choi Siwon more than he really has to. He can’t tell Mimi that, though, and with no other option, he nods.

“Yeah, that looks good.”

“Great. I’ll go stake it down.”

“Okay.” Kyuhyun pays for his lunch distractedly, watching as Mimi weaves in and out of the tables, watching as Choi Siwon raises a friendly hand to Mimi as he walks by their table, and Mimi smiles at him. Kyuhyun wants to punch something. He wants to drag Siwon out of the cafeteria by his ear and tell him not to come back until he’s revised his shitty opinions and that he better not mess with his best friend. He wants to be with Mimi, and anywhere but here.

Siwon doesn’t react to Kyuhyun at all when he walks by – and why would he? they don’t even really know each other, and he’s never evidenced any psychic abilities – but Mimi gives Kyuhyun a big smile when he pulls out a chair and sits down beside him.

“This is nice, huh?” Mimi says, digging into his kimchi and rice enthusiastically. “I’ve been so busy lately! I feel like I haven’t seen you at all this week. What’s up? How’re your voice lessons going?”

They fall into conversation easily, like they always have. It’s never awkward between them, even if their communication has been limited mostly to texting and instant messaging in the recent past, and that’s something that Kyuhyun is incredibly grateful for. There is only one person that he feels comfortable being himself around, and it’s more than he deserves, he's sure, that that one person is as constant in his life as he can be.

Kyuhyun is just glancing down at his watch to notice with trepidation that there’s only ten minutes left in the period when he feels someone come up behind him.

“Hi, Zhou Mi!” says the deep, cheerful voice of Choi Siwon. Kyuhyun hopes it’s not _too_ obvious how his spine straightens and the rest of his body tenses at the sound.

“Hi, Siwon,” Mimi replies, and Kyuhyun watches his open, friendly body language with dismay. Damnit, why does he have to be so nice? Why can’t he just tell Siwon to fuck off? This is supposed to be _their_ time, just Kyuhyun and Mimi. Nobody needs to be there less than Siwon does.

“I was wondering if we get our test results back in physics today,” Siwon says, and all of a sudden he’s sitting down in the chair across the table from them and what the hell, no, this is not allowed. He needs to go away.

“Oh, yeah! We do.”

“How did it go?” Siwon asks, shooting Mimi a big, conspiratory grin. “If you don’t mind my asking, of course.”

“No, it’s fine. I got an A,” Mimi says, and he’s practically beaming, he looks so pleased with himself, and Kyuhyun is momentarily distracted from loathing Siwon by how great Mimi looks when he’s happy.

“No way? That’s great! Congratulations, man!” Siwon leans across the table for a high five, and Kyuhyun’s ire is instantly turned back on again.

“Thanks!”

“You said you thought it was pretty easy when you took it, right?” Siwon asks, still leaning across the table, angled away from Kyuhyun, and Kyuhyun leans back, feeling awkward now on top of everything else at being so obviously ignored.

“Yeah,” Mimi says, leaning forward also. “I thought it was fair.”

“So do you think I did well, too?” Siwon asks, smiling and tilting his head.

“I’m sure you did,” Mimi replies, and suddenly something snaps into place in Kyuhyun’s head and he realizes that Siwon is flirting with Mimi. Choi “Gays Don’t Exist” Siwon, is flirting with Kyuhyun’s best friend, who used to have a crush on him.

_What. The. Actual. Fuck._

The hypocrisy and jealousy becomes too much for Kyuhyun to hold back on, and he reaches out and wraps a hand around Mimi’s forearm.

“Hey, Mimi,” he says, very deliberately not acknowledging that Siwon is still sitting across from them, “I forgot. I have to show you something in my locker.”

“Right now?” Siwon asks. “ _Mimi_ and I are kind of talking here.” Kyuhyun ignores him, even if it takes all the effort he has not to yell, _You don't get to call him that!_

“I can’t be sure I’ll be able to catch you during the week,” Kyuhyun says to Mimi, who looks understandably confused. “Come on, if we go now we won’t be late for our next classes.”

“I…” Mimi starts, looking over at Siwon and then back to Kyuhyun. “Okay. Sure. Give me your tray and I’ll put it away with mine, then we can go.”

“Great,” Kyuhyun says. Mimi takes his tray and then walks across the room to the dish conveyor belt.

“What was that all about?” Siwon asks, and Kyuhyun jumps a little, having forgotten he was there.

“What was what all about?” Kyuhyun returns coolly, looking Siwon in the eye for the first time since he sat down.

“Your sudden, invented emergency,” Siwon says, matching his tone. “Why are you so hostile toward me? What did I ever do to you, Kyuhyun-ssi?”

“Nothing,” Kyuhyun says shortly, standing up and grabbing his book bag. Siwon stands up as well.

“It’s obviously not nothing,” Siwon says. “You’re not very good at hiding it. You get even worse when you’re around Zhou Mi.” Then something changes in his face and Kyuhyun gets a very, very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. “It’s got something to do with Zhou Mi, doesn’t it?” He asks, and his voice goes low and conciliatory, like he’s realised a tragic fault in Kyuhyun that Kyuhyun is blind to. “You think you love him, don’t you? You’re jealous.”

Kyuhyun looks over his shoulder to see Mimi heading back their way. He turns back to Siwon as calmly as he can.

“You don’t believe that that’s even possible. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Just leave him alone.”

“I believe that you’ve been tempted into believing something that’s not true. Don’t drag him into that sin, Kyuhyun. He’s weak already, but he’s done good job of resisting it. He’s too good a person for that.” What Kyuhyun sees in his expression, though, is, _He’s too good for you._

 

Kyuhyun doesn’t actually remember punching Siwon in the face. He remembers what they were talking about. He remembers the rage rising inside him at the hypocrisy and self-righteous intolerance coming out of Siwon’s mouth. But he doesn’t remember hitting Siwon in that mouth.

The cafeteria monitor remembers, however. So do all of Siwon’s friends who sitting the next table over, and half of the people sitting at the other tables in the area as well. So does Mimi, who’s sitting next to him on the bench outside the headmaster’s office, cradling Kyuhyun’s bandaged hand – injured when Kyuhyun’s knuckles made contact with Siwon’s perfect, shiny, white, front teeth – between his own.

“What on earth did you do _that_ for?” Mimi whispers, running his thumb over the back of Kyuhyun’s hand, soothingly.

“It’s nothing,” Kyuhyun says, well aware that that’s the least convincing answer on earth.

“It’s obviously not,” Mimi argues, touching the bandages on Kyuhyun’s fingers.

“Just forget about it,” Kyuhyun pleads, leaning into him even as he speaks, resting his head against Mimi’s shoulder.

“ _Kuixian_ , you know that I can’t. What are you going to tell the headmaster? You’re in such big trouble… What if they kick you out?”

“They probably won’t. Not unless Siwon’s rich, corporate executive daddy kicks up a fuss.”

“Please, just tell me. Why won’t you? Don’t you trust me?” _Oh, fuck._ That’s exactly the right card to play, and it’s a delicate one. Kyuhyun knows that Mimi wouldn’t pull that out if he wasn’t desperate.

“He was being an asshole,” Kyuhyun mutters, reluctantly.

“What could he have possibly done that was so bad in the less than two minutes that I was gone?”

“He was doing it when you were there, too, you just didn’t notice.”

“What do you mean?” Mimi asks, tilting his head so that his cheek is lying against Kyuhyun’s hair. One of his arms around Kyuhyun’s shoulders now, while the other holds onto his hand. “We were just talking about class.”

“He was flirting with you,” Kyuhyun says softly, feeling like the words are tearing out of him. They never talk about this. Never. They both know, but they never say anything. “I think he knows about… Anyway. He was testing you. He said that he wanted to make sure you were strong enough to resist the temptation.” Not entirely true, but close enough. Mimi doesn’t have to know about Siwon’s accusation of Kyuhyun.

Mimi takes in a deep, shocked breath, and his hand tightens around Kyuhyun’s fingers painfully, but Kyuhyun summons all his strength and squeezes back, trying to be reassuring. _I’m here to protect you. I’ll always be here._

“You still shouldn’t have hit him,” Mimi says in a strained voice, and Kyuhyun hopes to god that he’s not going to cry. “If you get expelled then what will I do here without you?”

Kyuhyun’s heart kicks him in the chest. “You’ll be graduating soon. You wouldn’t be alone for too long.”

“Any time away from you is too long,” Mimi says softly.

The headmaster’s door swings open.

“Cho Kyuhyun?” the headmaster’s P.A. asks. Kyuhyun straightens up and Mimi lets go of his hand.

“I’ll see you on the other side,” Kyuhyun promises, and steps in to his fate.

 

Kyuhyun doesn’t end up getting expelled – it turns out that Prince Siwon’s daddy is more disappointed that Siwon didn’t beat the pulp out of Kyuhyun in retribution than he is in Kyuhyun for hitting his son in the first place; charming man – but he does find himself on a week of out-of-school suspension with a pile of work that Mimi augments every day when he drops by Kyuhyun’s house after classes end, assignments in hand.

Kyuhyun is technically also grounded by his parents for getting suspended, but since Mimi is the school’s designated homework courier, he gets a pass into the house, and since Kyuhyun’s parents adore Mimi and think he’s a good influence on their moody son, they don’t make him leave once he arrives. As a result, Kyuhyun is rewarded for punching Siwon by getting to see his best friend more in the week that he’s suspended than he has in the month beforehand.

“When you said he was flirting with me,” Mimi says on Wednesday, completely out of the blue as he’s flipping distractedly through one of Kyuhyun’s cheat code manuals while Kyuhyun tries to dredge the dates for the Battle of Incheon up from his memory, “what did you mean by that?”

“Huh?” Kyuhyun mutters, not really paying attention.

“Siwon. You said he was flirting with me. I didn’t even notice. What was he doing?”

“Oh. Uh.” _Why is he bringing this up now? Why does he even care?_ “He was just… being flirty, I guess? I dunno. He was leaning across the table toward you and making eyes.”

“‘Making eyes?’”

“Yeah, like… flirting eyes.”

“You’re not really expanding much upon the definition of ‘flirting’ here, Kuixian,” Mimi points out, sounding a little exasperated but fond.

“Well, my brain is currently using most of its energy trying to remember boring stuff for my history homework. What are the dates for the Battle of Incheon?”

“Fifteenth though the nineteenth of September, 1950. Are you sure he was flirting with me? I would have thought I’d notice.”

“How do you know that off the top of your head? That’s ridiculous,” Kyuhyun says, shooting him an incredulous look but filling the dates in the correct blank anyway. There are a couple seconds of silence and then Mimi says,

“…Kuixian?”

“Sorry, what?” Kyuhyun looks over at Mimi, lying opposite Kyuhyun on his bedroom floor.

“My question?”

“Uh, oh. Yeah. No, he was definitely flirting with you. He confirmed it when I accused him of it, so there’s no doubt of that.”

“Oh.” Another couple of minutes of silence follow, filled only with the soft swoosh of pages turning in Kyuhyun’s cheat code book – it’s abundantly obvious that Mimi’s just looking at the pictures – and the scritch of Kyuhyun’s pen against his homework. And then: “So you started the argument? You accused him of flirting with me?”

“I…” Kyuhyun sets his pen down and stares at the carpet. Should he tell Mimi that Siwon started it by calling Kyuhyun out on being possessive, or not? _Well, in the interest of honesty…_ “No. He asked me why I was trying to get you away from him, and it kind of spiraled out from there.” There. That’s more or less what happened, anyway.

“Why were you trying to get me away from him?” Mimi asks, and when Kyuhyun looks up at him, he sees that he’s put the booklet to the side and he’s propping his chin up with his hands.

“He was playing with you,” Kyuhyun says, wondering why that’s not obvious. “I wasn’t just going to let him keep doing that to you.”

“I see. Do you think…?” Mimi trails off, suddenly looking unsure as to whether or not he actually wants to ask whatever’s on his mind.

“What?”

“Do you think he knows that I used to like him? Do you think that’s why he was doing it?”

Kyuhyun takes a deep breath. “I think so, Mimi, yeah.” Mimi bites his lip, clearly made anxious by this, and why shouldn’t he be? His biggest secret is apparently known to someone who doesn’t approve of it. “But I don’t think he’ll tell anyone about it.”

“Why not?”

 _Because I think that there’s a part of him that likes you, too,_ Kyuhyun doesn’t say. “Because he’s decent in ways that make up for the ones he’s not. He probably genuinely means more good than harm, even if he’s an asshole about it,” he says instead, and Mimi nods, still uncertain. “Look,” Kyuhyun says, reaching across the floor between them and touching the back of Mimi’s hand, “it doesn’t matter either way, okay? Because I’ll always be here to fight for you, no matter what. I’d never let him, or anyone else, hurt you.”

That gets him a smile, and Mimi’s other hand comes down to rest of Kyuhyun’s on top of his own.

“So, does that make you my knight in shining armor?”

Kyuhyun groans. “Oh, god. No. Please don’t.”

“Riding in on a white steed?”

“Mimi…”

“My school tie tied as a token around your wrist?” Mimi bats his eyelashes at him obnoxiously and Kyuhyun extracts his hand to plant it over Mimi’s mouth.

“I take it back. I’m going to feed you directly to the first dragon I find.”

“You’d never,” Mimi says, muffled and confidently cheerful.

“I might. I’ve never met a dragon yet, so who knows? I guess we’ll see when the time comes.”

“You loooove me!” Mimi crows and then he licks Kyuhyun’s palm and Kyuhyun is too distracted with yelping in disgust and wiping his hand off on his shirt to think too much about it.

 

Kyuhyun spends Wednesday night and most of Thursday thinking about how he’s been kind of a shit support system, though. It’s not that he hasn’t stuck by Mimi’s side for pretty much ever, always been there to prop him up if he needed it, but he’s never really made himself obviously available as a confidant for the one thing that Mimi can’t talk to anyone else about.

The last time they actually talked about Mimi liking someone, it was three years ago and they were talking about something that had happened two years before that. Mimi’s never told him about liking anyone else, but he’s also never asked, which isn’t fair. Mimi’s asked him, from time to time, if there’s anyone he’s interested in – the answer is always an honest “no” – but Kyuhyun’s never done the same. He wonders if Mimi thinks that he doesn’t want to know, that he’s still kind of freaked out by the idea of him liking boys, even though he’s tried to make it clear that he’s not.

He’s not actually entirely sure why he’s never asked Mimi if he’s got a crush on anyone. Maybe it’s because they don’t have any classes together, so he never gets to see him interact with people in ways that might give him clues. Maybe it’s because who Mimi likes isn’t really that important to him, since it doesn’t change who he is. Maybe it’s because Mimi’s never been very forthcoming about it, so Kyuhyun just assumed that there was nothing to talk about. _Maybe,_ a well-meaning part of his mind suggests, _it’s because you don’t want to have to entertain the notion of sharing him with someone. You’ve never been interested in anyone else, so you don’t want **him** to be interested in anyone else. You want it to just be the two of you, forever._

That last thought in particular is interesting in ways that Kyuhyun doesn’t really want to address head-on, for all that it rings of the truth, so by Friday morning he’s determined to start acting like the interested friend he should be, and on Friday afternoon after school he asks.

“So…” he says, trying to act as smooth and natural as possible, “have you had your eye on anyone lately?”

“Huh?” Mimi says, blowing on a steaming clump ramen and shooting him a quizzical look from across the kitchen island.

“Like, are there any guys that you’re interested in?” Mimi’s jaw goes a little slack and he nearly loses his load of noodles back into his soup as he stares at Kyuhyun like he just started speaking in perfect Italian. “What are you looking at me like that for?” Kyuhyun asks, feeling embarrassed. “What?!”

“I, uh,” Mimi says, turning a little pink. “I guess I never really expected you to ask me that.” He stuffs the noodles into his mouth and Kyuhyun considers this. Guess that means he really _has_ been a shitty friend, if his inquiring into Mimi’s love life gets him such a weird reaction.

“Well, I never asked before,” he says. “But I’m interested, so I’m asking now. So?”

“Uh, well, yeah,” Mimi admits after swallowing another large, procrastinatory mouthful of noodles. “There is someone.”

 _Oh._ “Who is it?”

“Are you sure you want to know?” Mimi asks, looking up at him with an expression Kyuhyun hates, one that says, _I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I don’t want you to abandon me._

“I asked, Mimi. Duh, I want to know. Who is it?” Only he doesn’t want to know, not really. He asked because he thought he should and a little bit – he doesn’t even really want to admit it to himself, but it’s true – because he thought he’d get relief out of hearing that there was no one. Hearing that there _is_ someone, though, that there _is_ someone who is competing for Mimi’s affection, is annoying and sort of upsetting and he doesn’t want to know more about it because that will make this other person too real. But he did ask, and he’s trying to be a good friend, so he’s going to hear it whether he really wants to or not.

“Um. His name is Calvin Chen. He’s Taiwanese. He’s in a couple of my classes at the hagwon. He’s really nice, and tall, and handsome and…ah, you don’t want to hear this,” Mimi says all in a rush, fishing around in his bowl for any noodles which might be trying to hide in the foggy broth.

“No,” Kyuhyun says, despite the screaming in his head to the contrary. “I do.”

“Well, he was the first person to talk to me at the hagwon. He sits next to me in all the classes we have together and we help each other when we don’t understand something and partner up when we have group work. He looks sort of like a fish, I guess. But not in a bad way? It’s kind of cute. And sometimes he calls me when he needs help with his homework, and sometimes I call him, too. He’s really great, Kuixian. I really think you’d like him.”

When he looks back up at Kyuhyun, Mimi’s eyes are bright and his cheeks are flushed with happiness. This Calvin guy – who Kyuhyun didn’t know even existed ten minutes ago – is apparently a huge part of Mimi’s life. A part that Kyuhyun isn’t privy to or wanted in. He feels irrationally angry and hates himself for it. It’s totally fine, in theory, if Mimi has friends that Kyuhyun doesn’t know about, spends time with other people. But Kyuhyun doesn’t like it, all the same.

“That’s great!” he says anyway, and then he lets it drop.

 

Just before Mimi leaves that afternoon, Kyuhyun gets an idea.

“Are you usually free on Saturdays?” he asks as they hunt for Mimi’s missing school blazer in the mess that is Kyuhyun’s room.  It's almost inconceivable that it could get buried under the junk on Kyuhyun's floor in the space of three hours. Almost. “You don’t have hagwon or extra lessons on Saturday evenings, do you?”

“I have lessons from ten until five,” Mimi replies from under Kyuhyun’s bed, from which he emerges with his wrinkled blazer in hand. “Why?”

“I was just thinking – we barely get to see each other anymore since you’re so busy. What if we had sleepovers every Saturday? We could switch houses on and off if we needed to. I know my parents would be fine with it; they love you.”

“Aren’t we a little old for that?” Mimi asks, putting his blazer on and giving it a half-hearted pat to get rid of the dust and bits of Kyuhyun’s cat’s fur.

“Does it matter?” Kyuhyun snaps, feeling defensive all of a sudden. “I never get to hang out with you anymore. If that’s the only time, why does it matter?”

“Kuixian!” Mimi looks surprised and kind of hurt and but mostly really affectionate when he sweeps in and catches Kyuhyun up in a hug which is incredibly awkward if only for Kyuhyun’s unprepared arms trapped between their chests like he’s cosplaying a T-rex. “Of course not! I was only teasing! Of course I want to see you more. I’ll ask my mom, but I’m sure it will be fine.”

“Great,” Kyuhyun says, wriggling his arms out to his sides and around Mimi’s back, giving him a quick squeeze before pulling back. “It’s really annoying when I have to miss you.”

 

“I’m not going to be able to sleep over this Saturday,” Mimi says after school one Tuesday in mid-October, having caught up to Kyuhyun at the school gates and offered to walk him home, a rare occurrence now that Mimi’s eating, sleeping, and breathing exam prep.

“What?” Kyuhyun says. “Why?” Saturday sleepovers have become their _thing_. With Mimi spending so much more time at hagwon and studying now, sometimes Saturdays are the only days he sees him at all. Even if all they do is play video games or do homework or watch movies together, Kyuhyun really treasures those precious few hours out of every busy week.

“I, uh,” Mimi hesitates and looks around as if to make sure that nobody’s listening.

“What?”

“I have a date.”

“A…a what?” Kyuhyun asks, stopping dead in his tracks and staring at Mimi like he’s started to speak another language altogether.

“I’m going on a date on Saturday.”

“With a guy?” Kyuhyun says, still too surprised to remember to keep his voice down, and Mimi flinches and looks around again, worried.

“Yeah.”

“When—who is it?”

“It’s that guy I told you about from my hagwon. The Taiwanese boy, Calvin.”

“Oh.” Kyuhyun starts walking again and Mimi does a little hop as he goes to catch up. “So he _was_ interested, then.”

“Yeah. He, uh. He caught me after English lessons yesterday and asked me to go see a movie with him.” Mimi’s eyes are bright with happiness and a touch of wonder that something so seemingly impossibly good has happened to him. Kyuhyun could so easily be drawn into it, but it’s not for him, so he resists. “Obviously, I don’t want to miss out on time with you, but Saturday is the only day that both Calvin and I have free, so…”

 _Oh,_ Kyuhyun thinks a touch bitterly. _You’re free on Saturday nights, are you? What am I, then?_ But he says, “Oh, yeah. Right. Are you sure that it’s a date and not just an as-friends thing?”  

“It’s…” Mimi says, and he looks down at his feet as he walks, face tinged pink. Kyuhyun’s stomach twists. “Yeah. He said some things to me before he asked. I can’t say, but… yeah. It’s definitely a date.”

“That’s great!” Kyuhyun says, trying to sound like he means it, but the feeling that someone’s thrown a brick at his solar plexus is making it hard. “I want to meet him,” he adds, and that definitely comes out with truth.

“Kuixian…” Mimi sounds unsure, but Kyuhyun is determined.

“I have to make sure he’s good enough for you,” he says. “It’s my job, as your best friend.”

“Yeah?” Mimi turns to him with gratitude and love – friendly, only friendly – in his eyes and Kyuhyun doesn’t look away, for once. “Okay. You can come over beforehand and meet him when he comes to pick me up.”

This is where they part. Mimi’s heading off to his hagwon for another seven hours or so of studying, and Kyuhyun’s going home to finish his English practice book and then destroy the motherfucking undeath out of some radioactive zombies.

“I’ll see you on Saturday, then,” Kyuhyun says, and Mimi tugs him into a hug, right there in the middle of the sidewalk.

“I’m going to miss you until then, Kuixian,” he says. “Stay safe!”

And then he’s gone.

 

Kyuhyun usually looks forward to Saturday. Usually it can’t come fast enough, and the days just drag by like they’re weighed down with lead. This week, though, Saturday seems to jump on him, pouncing with its teeth bared. Kyuhyun feels utterly betrayed.

He spends the morning half-doing his homework, trying to stop his mind from conjuring up what it’s going to be like seeing Mimi walk away with his date. He doesn’t have to imagine what Calvin might look like, of course – Mimi’s got roughly a thousand selcas of them together on his phone and Kyuhyun’s probably seen at least two thirds of them. Knowing that Kyuhyun is supposedly okay with him and Calvin has done wonders for Mimi’s openness with him. It’s not like he talks about it constantly, but he definitely feels free to now, and at least some part of every Saturday night has been devoted to what Calvin did/said to/with Mimi over the past week. He’s been slowly infringing on Kyuhyun’s time with his best friend; really it stands to figure that he’d eventually take the whole night over, too.

At five thirty he puts on the best clothes he has that still look causal enough to maintain that he’s not really trying with it, screams into a pillow to get all of his annoyance out ahead of time, runs a hand through his hair, and leaves the apartment. Fifteen minutes later, Mimi’s dragging him through his front door and down the hall to his room, babbling at a mile a minute about not knowing what to wear and does his hair look alright and should he wear cologne or would that be weird?

“Okay,” Kyuhyun says. “Shut up.”

Mimi does. He sits on the edge of his bed with his hands fidgeting in his lap and Kyuhyun rolls his eyes at him.

“Your clothes look fine. Maybe unbutton the top shirt so that you’re wearing it open over the other one.” Mimi’s hands go straight to his button-up shirt and do as he’s told. “Right. Wear your black sneakers, and you’ll be good. Your hair looks fine. Cologne is probably okay as long as you don’t bathe in it.”

“Ah, can you help me then? I’m afraid I’ll put too much on!” Mimi gets up and grabs a small, foggy grey bottle off his desk, uncaps it, and holds it out to Kyuhyun. Kyuhyun gives it a questioning sniff. It smells very, very familiar. A subdued scent, something with a hint of cherry blossom. It smells like Mimi.

“Close your eyes,” Kyuhyun says, and Mimi does. Kyuhyun stands in front of him and looks at him, carefully, taking in every inch of him while he can. He really does look good: the black shirt accentuates his slim, lightly muscled frame, the plaid shirt adding a casual touch which makes it okay to let your eyes linger. His dark wash jeans make his legs seem even longer than they are, and although his white socks kind of ruin the picture, with dark shoes it will be complete. His hair is slightly messy, a little spiked and falling over his left eye in a way that looks accidental but Kyuhyun knows was undoubtedly the product of ten minutes and styling wax. His face is mostly calm, but there’s a muscle jumping in his cheek which shows that he’s trying to hold back a smile. He’s excited, and it makes him beautiful.

For one stupid, senseless moment, Kyuhyun leans in to kiss him.

Then Mimi’s hand comes up, searching, and touches Kyuhyun’s elbow.

“What are you waiting for?” he asks, and Kyuhyun goes suddenly numb, wondering how Mimi read his mind with his eyes closed and what that reaction might mean, before he realises that Mimi’s wondering why he’s waiting so long with the cologne.

“Sorry,” he says, bringing the bottle up to Mimi’s neck, aiming just between the sharp jut of his collarbones over the edge of his shirt. “The trigger was stuck.” One spritz there, tiny, and then just below his ears. Then he picks up Mimi’s arm. “You can open your eyes now,” he says, and sprays a little bit on the inside of his wrist. When he looks back up, Mimi actually _is_ smiling, looking grateful and happy, and Kyuhyun can barely stand to look back when he knows it’s not just for him.

“Thanks,” Mimi says quietly, and he rubs his wrists together to distribute the scent between them. Kyuhyun caps the bottle and puts it on Mimi’s desk, then gets a shock when he feels arms wind around his waist and a chest pressed to his back. “I know this is probably weird for you, helping me out with this,” Mimi says, his voice low and very, very close to Kyuhyun’s ear. “But I’m glad it’s you that’s with me. You’re the best Kuixian, really. Thank you.”

Kyuhyun takes a moment to centre himself. He brings his hands away from the desk and touches the backs of Mimi’s hands, gently, where they’re resting against his stomach. He drags his fingers across Mimi’s, like piano keys, and then he says, “You don’t need to thank me. I’m happy being here, too.” It feels fragile, this moment – like anything could happen. It’s so easy to forget that Mimi is thanking Kyuhyun for helping him get ready for a date with someone else. And it seems as though if Kyuhyun had kissed him all those minutes – has it really been so long? – ago, he wouldn’t have been pushed away.

Then the buzzer for Mimi’s apartment goes off. Kyuhyun drops his hands to desk like he’s been burned, but Mimi lingers for another second, gives him another quick squeeze before he backs away, and when Kyuhyun’s turned around again, he’s running his hands over the front of his shirt, smoothing it down.

“That’s Calvin,” Mimi says, smiling though his voice is trembling with nerves. “I’d better go let him up.”

Kyuhyun follows him out into the living room and sits on the arm of the couch as Mimi confirms that it’s Calvin and presses the button to release the security door. His parents aren’t home – his father is in China on business and his mother is having a girl’s night with some friends, all the better so that he doesn’t have to explain to them why he’s so excited about going out with a friend – so Kyuhyun is the only person who will see him off. Mimi takes his coat out of the closet and buttons it up.

“Are you sure I look alright?” he asks Kyuhyun, checking himself in the mirror above the table next to the door and fidgeting with his hair.

“You look great. Cut it out,” Kyuhyun says, perhaps a little more abruptly than is entirely necessary, and just seconds later there’s a knock on the door. Mimi gives a little “eep!” and then smacks his hand over his mouth and looks at the door like he’s praying for it to be sound-proof enough for Calvin not to have heard.  “Well,” Kyuhyun prompts, when Mimi just stares at the door knob. “Open it.”

Mimi takes a deep breath and then unlocks and opens the door to reveal, in the flesh, the Man From The Selcas. “Hi, Calvin!” he says.

Calvin is taller than he looked from the pictures, just about Mimi’s height, with dyed light brown hair, wearing a beige jacket with light blue jeans. Kyuhyun guesses that he’s good looking, in a slightly unconventional kind of way, but he can’t help but glare at him all the same. _Not good enough, not good enough, no._

“Hi, Zhou Mi!” Calvin replies, taking a step into the apartment and wrapping his arms around Mimi for a quick, welcoming hug. And then he notices Kyuhyun glowering off to the side. “Who’s this?”

“Oh!” Mimi says, turning with one of Calvin’s arms still around his waist to give Kyuhyun a little wave over. “This is my best friend, Cho Kyuhyun. Kyuhyun, this is Calvin Chen.”

“Hi, Kyuhyun-ssi.” Calvin smiles at him, and then pauses. “How old are you?” he asks, and Kyuhyun is instantly annoyed by the tone of his voice.

“Sixteen,” he snaps.

“Sixteen?” Calvin says, sounding surprised. “Zhou Mi, you didn’t say your best friend was sixteen! Isn't that a little young?” Kyuhyun wonders how much, if anything, Mimi has told Calvin about him.

“We’ve been friends since we were kids,” Mimi says, as though he feels the need to explain to this clown why there’s a measly two-year age gap between them, and that – combined with the force of Kyuhyun’s glower – is enough to shut Calvin up on that topic.

“Ah,” he says. “Well, nice to meet you, Kyuhyun-ssi. We’d better go, Zhou Mi, or the movie will start without us.”

“Don’t want that!” Mimi chirps, and Calvin smiles at him and they laugh together. Kyuhyun puts his jacket on and slips into his shoes, then walks past the pair of them out the door into the hallway. Mimi closes the door and locks it behind them.

“Have a good time,” Kyuhyun says, hoping that for once it sounds like he means it. He doesn’t want Mimi to worry about him when he’s supposed to be having a good time, even if the situation is not ideal.

“Thanks!” Mimi says, reaching out and touching his shoulder. “Bye, Kuixian.”

“Bye, _hyung_.”

Kyuhyun waves them down the hall into the elevator, and then he takes the stairs.

 

It would be one thing if that was the only time, if Kyuhyun’s Saturdays with Mimi were not regularly hijacked. But they are. Mimi's first date with Calvin goes really well, but because exam prep is still of utmost importance, both of them continue to only have Saturday night free of educational obligations. It’s not like Mimi’s being malicious or thoughtless about it – he asks Kyuhyun with total genuineness if he’d be okay if they only do their sleepovers every other Saturday so that he and Calvin can go out together, and he stresses that it’s okay if Kyuhyun doesn’t agree – but Kyuhyun doesn’t really have a choice but to go along with it. To deny Mimi the happiness he’s found would be too cruel a thing to do as his best friend.

 _It’s only four weeks,_ Kyuhyun tells himself as he spends another Saturday night alone with his homework and his laptop. Then entrance exams will happen and Mimi’s work load will decrease enough so that he’ll have time he can spend with Calvin which doesn’t encroach on his and Kyuhyun’s standing plans. Four seems like such a small number, such a little thing to have to live through, but when Kyuhyun breaks it down he finds that it amounts to him being able to spend a grand total of less than one day out of thirty with his best friend. Ridiculous.

So what if Calvin is kind of Mimi’s boyfriend now? So fucking what?! Kyuhyun is his best friend. Kyuhyun knows him better than anyone else. And yeah, Kyuhyun loves him better than anyone else. Calvin’s only know him for a couple of months and he thinks he likes him. Kyuhyun’s known him for ten _years._ He knows everything about him. He’s seen him break down into tears at bad grades or bullying remarks, he’s been by his side when he’s done well, hell – he punched Siwon in the face for him! Siwon doesn’t even look at Mimi sideways now! Kyuhyun knows everything about him and Kyuhyun loves him. It’s too bad Mimi doesn’t love him back the way that he wants.

Kyuhyun thinks about thinking about kissing him, on those Saturday nights when he’s alone and trying _not_ to think about what Mimi is doing with Calvin on their date. He thinks about the moment when he thought he might, when it almost seemed inevitable. Not so much a shock, not really a revelation. All of Kyuhyun’s life he’d only ever really cared about Mimi; it wasn’t such a surprise that this part of his life, too, should focus on him. It’s not an _I wanted to kiss him, what’s wrong with me?_ but an _I want to kiss him, but he doesn’t want me to, so I can’t._

On the Saturdays they have together, Kyuhyun examines this urge up close, to make sure that it’s real and not a product of desperation borne of the fear of losing Mimi to an unknown party. He watches Mimi following people on screen with his eyes, he sees him bite his lip when he’s writing lyrics that he’ll ask Kyuhyun to sing for him later in the night, he notes the snug wrap of Mimi’s arm over Kyuhyun’s shoulders as Kyuhyun rests on him and the low hum of his voice near Kyuhyun’s ear as he whispers things to him needlessly when they're alone in his room. Rather than fading, the thought of kissing him becomes more and more attractive with every cataloged detail, every moment of warmth and friendship and intimacy. If Mimi wasn’t dating Calvin, Kyuhyun might even do something.

But he is, so he won’t.

 

The day before National Exam Day, Kyuhyun gets a phone call. Nobody calls him except for his mother (and sometimes his father on his mother’s behalf), so he’s very confused to see Mimi’s name in the middle of his screen.

“Um,” he says, answering the call with some trepidation. “Hello?”

“Kuixian!” Mimi says, sounding breathless and hyper. “The exams are tomorrow. Oh my god, what am I going to do? I’m going to fail! I’m going to die! There’s no way I prepared enough for them! Everyone else is going to do so much better than me, and I’m not going to get into a good university and my mother is going to be so disappointed, and I should really be studying or maybe sleeping right now but I can’t because I’m so nervous and I’m just making it worse for myself and…”

“Woah, woah. Mimi. Shut up for a second,” Kyuhyun says, and flops onto his back on his bed. “Calm down. What’s wrong?”

“I’m nervous!” Mimi says, tone bordering on whining. “CSATs are tomorrow, Kuixian! University deciding, life-path-carving exams and I’m not ready.”

“You’re going to be fine.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know _you,_ Mimi-hyung. You’re not capable of half-assing anything. Besides, you did really well on the mocks, didn’t you?”

“Well, it’s not like I think I’m unprepared on purpose, Kuixian-ah,” Mimi shoots back, a smile clearly lacing his voice. Kyuhyun’s plan is working already.

“Intent has nothing to do with it. You just can’t do anything badly,” Kyuhyun says and Mimi laughs.

“You have an awful lot of faith in me.”

“I’ve known you forever. I’ve got lots of reasons to.”

“You really think I’m going to be okay?” Mimi asks, but most of the tension is gone from his voice.

“Seoul National, here you come!” Kyuhyun cheers, channelling every cheesy adventure movie he’s ever been forced to watch.

“Ah! Don’t say that!” Mimi squeaks, sounding more eight than eighteen. “You’ll curse it. Anyway, all I want is Kyunghee. If I get in there, I’ll be happy.”

“Kyunghee, here you come!”

“Stop it!”

“Don’t be dumb. You’d better let me stay over in your dorm there, you know. There’s no point to you living in Seoul if I don’t get to visit.”

“You’ll be there with me, soon enough.”

“Oh, so you admit you’ll get in!” Kyuhyun crows, tasting victory.

“I…what? I didn’t—” Mimi stutters, but it’s too late.

“Ha! No takebacks!” Kyuhyun shouts down the line, and Mimi goes, “Kuixian!” in this voice like he wishes he could sound shocked but he’s laughing too hard to manage it.

“Go to sleep, Mimi, okay?” Kyuhyun says once they’ve both calmed down and he’s lying on his side, phone pressed between his pillow and his ear. “I’m still seeing you tomorrow evening, right?”

“Yeah, of course!” Mimi says, bright with ideas for a future After The Exam. “Calvin’s supposed to be doing something with his family, anyway.” _Urgh_ , Kyuhyun can’t help but think. _Calvin. Right. The only reason I ever get to see him anymore is that **Calvin** is too busy to._

“So I’ll see you after you’re done killing that test. Goodnight, Mimi.”

“If you say so. Goodnight, Kuixian.”

 

The day the official CSAT results come out, Kyuhyun nearly loses circulation in his hand. Mimi’s got a grip on his fingers the strength and determination of which would put the rigor mortised corpse of a pro wrestler to shame.

“Do you think,” Kyuhyun asks through grit teeth, “you could maybe ease up a bit on the squeezing? We already know that you did fine.”

“We _think_ I did fine,” Mimi corrects, “based on the answer sheets. But I didn’t remember all of it, obviously, and I think I screwed up English in a major way.”

“ _Ouch! Do you understand?_ ” Kyuhyun asks in English, tapping Mimi’s side of their unholy nest of fingers.

“Oh! I’m sorry! Was I hurting you?” Mimi asks, instantly letting go of Kyuhyun’s hand only to take it back and try to massage away the pain. “Can you refresh the page again?”

“Nothing’s going to have changed,” Kyuhyun tells him wearily, and uses his unmolested hand to hit the refresh button as he has been doing every thirty seconds after twelve p.m. sharp when the official test results were due to be released. It is now twelve o’ six. The waiting would be unbearable even without Mimi’s neuroses, but as it is Kyuhyun’s been praying for knockout drops to magically appear within his reach. The only saving grace of the whole situation is that Calvin is waiting for the results with his family, and Mimi’s parents are attending a cousin’s wedding in China, so Kyuhyun’s got Mimi alone.

“You can’t really expect them to be right on time,” he says, eyebrows raised pleadingly in Mimi’s direction. “Why don’t we go make lunch and then come back and look? Mimi?”

Mimi’s got a far-off look on his face, his mouth hanging slightly open, and his fingers have stopped doing weird things to Kyuhyun’s knuckles. Kyuhyun follows his gaze and sees numbers on the previously empty white screen in front of him. Mimi lets out a little shriek.

The day Mimi scores in the ninety-sixth percentile, Kyuhyun’s nearly suffocated against his shoulder.

 

Calvin and Mimi split up on a Friday night in January. Kyuhyun gets home from musical rehearsal – still wearing roughly a pound of stage foundation which is several shades too dark for his complexion and lipstick that would sorely offend even the most outgoing of performance artists – to find Mimi sitting on his family room couch, drinking milk tea out of a giant mug and crying as Kyuhyun’s older sister gently rubs his back. Ahra looks up when Kyuhyu  opens the door and almost cracks a smile at his appearance, but Mimi gives another stifled sob and her expression goes concerned again in a second.

“What happened?” Kyuhyun demands, dropping his backpack carelessly next to the door and not even bothering to take off his shoes before he’s walking over to the couch and dropping down on Mimi’s opposite side.

Mimi looks up at him with red eyes, sore from crying, and opens his mouth like he’s going to speak. An anguished little noise comes out instead, and he drops his head and closes his eyes. Tears go plop, plop, plop into his tea.

“His girlfriend broke up with him,” Ahra says, smoothing circles against Mimi’s shoulders.

“Oh,’” Kyuhyun says. _When I find Calvin I’m going to kill him. Even though I didn’t want him to be dating Mimi to begin with, I’m going to kill him. What an idiot._

“He came here straight from her house.”

“I forgot you had rehearsal tonight,” Mimi offers in a small voice, the first time he’s spoken since Kyuhyun entered. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“Don’t be silly,” Ahra reprimands gently. “You know we all love you.”

“Thanks, noona,” Mimi says, giving her watery smile, and Ahra pats his back then stands up.

“Mom’s making him some soup,” she tells Kyuhyun. “Do you want some as well? Mom, Dad and I already ate, so it’s up to you to find something if you don’t.”

“Sure,” Kyuhyun says, letting his hand settle on Mimi’s back in the place that Ahra abandoned. “Can you bring it to my room?” Ahra narrows her eyes at him.

“This one time, I will. But I’m not your servant, Cho Kyuhyun. Don’t get any ideas.”

“Yes, noona,” Kyuhyun intones dryly in return. “Thank you, noona.” When she’s left for the kitchen, he stands up. “Come on, you. If you make it to my room, I’ll let you borrow my warmest sweater and not even complain when your grasshopper body stretches it out. What the hell are you wearing just a t-shirt for anyway? It’s freezing out.”

Mimi spares him a half-hearted smile as he stands up, clutching the mug of tea in his hands like it’s his only link to reality. “I forgot my sweatshirt at Cal—at my girlfriend’s house. I wasn’t thinking straight.” His lower lip trembles dangerously, so Kyuhyun gives him a gentle shove in the right direction.

“Go wait in my room, I’ll be right there, okay?”

Mimi shuffles off down the hallway and Kyuhyun gets his backpack from next to the door, kicks his shoes off and goes to the kitchen. His father is squinting at something on his laptop screen, surrounded by a biblical amount of paper, Ahra is making faces at her economics textbook, and his mother is standing over the stove, absentmindedly stirring a giant pot of what smells like kongnamulguk.

“Oh, Kyuhyun!” his mother exclaims when she sees him. “How is Zhou Mi doing? He was so upset when he showed up! He couldn’t stop crying.”

“It was frightening,” Kyuhyun’s father chimes in without looking away from his computer. “I don’t think I’ve seen that boy do anything but smile since he was ten years old.”

“He’s a mess,” Kyuhyun admits. His family are practically Mimi’s family as well, and they care about him. “Is it alright if he sleeps over? If he asks his mom, and she says yes?”

“Of course, honey!” his mother exclaims. “He can stay for as long as he needs to. The soup will be done in another five minutes or so. I’ll have Ahra bring it in to you.”

“Not a servant,” Kyuhyun hears his sister mutter under her breath.

“Thanks, mom. Thanks noona,” he says and then he rushes off to his room.

 

Mimi is sitting in the middle of Kyuhyun’s bed, one hand over his eyes, wiping at them, and one resting on his lap. His mug of tea is cooling on Kyuhyun’s desk. At least he’s not actively crying anymore. That’s something.

Kyuhyun puts his backpack on his desk chair and opens his closet to find his favourite sweater. It’s a thick, ugly wool thing that his grandmother gave him for his thirteenth birthday. It was too big when she gave it to him, but thanks to his freakish teenage growth spurt it’s just about the right size now. It’s lumpy and the colour of cheese mould and he’d never wear it out of the house, but it’s the warmest thing he’s ever felt in his life.

“Here,” he says, taking it off its hanger and extending it to Mimi, who takes it with trepidation-filled movements.

“You know that when you get this back it’s going to be the wrong shape,” Mimi reminds him cautiously. He knows how much Kyuhyun loves that sweater. Kyuhyun loves him more.

He sighs. “Just put it on, Mimi.”

Mimi does. To say it’s a bit small on him is to understate the effect it presents. The hem comes up to just under his bellybutton and the sleeves stop midway down his forearms. Kyuhyun bites his lip to keep from laughing and doesn’t do a very good job. Mimi looks down at himself, examines his arms, and then looks up at Kyuhyun with a smile that just about does Kyuhyun in.

“You don’t get to laugh at me,” he says. “First of all, you told me to wear this. Second of all, you look like you escaped from the circus. I’m not the most ridiculous person in this room.”

Stage makeup. Oops. Kyuhyun glares at him.

“I’m going to take this off. I’ll be right back. Don’t go stretching out any more of my clothes while I'm gone,” he warns, and leaves Mimi grinning at him from a tear-free face.

When he comes back, feeling as though he’s peeled an extra layer of skin off his face, Mimi’s blowing on a spoonful of steaming soup from the bowl in his lap.

“Ahra just dropped these off,” he explains, pointing to another bowl sitting on Kyuhyun’s desk, waiting for him. “She also told me to tell you that I look much better in this sweater than you do.”

“She’s just trying to cheer you up,” Kyuhyun says, locking the door behind him and turning around just in time to see the smile slip off of Mimi’s face.

“Yeah…” Mimi says vaguely, and he takes a sip of his soup. He doesn’t look like he’s in danger of crying, though. Hopefully he’s got that phase completely out of the way already.

“You want to talk about it?” Kyuhyun offers, picking up his own bowl of soup and sitting cross-legged against the headboard of his bed. Mimi takes the cue and arranges himself likewise across from him, hunched over his bowl.

“I guess so,” he says quietly.

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Kyuhyun hastens to assure him. “We can play video games or watch a movie or something. Or we can video chat with Heechul-hyung. He’s been complaining about not being able to talk to you. Apparently he’s made a new Chinese victim-slash-friend at university and he wants you to translate the guy's bad Korean for him.”

Mimi does crack a small grin at that before his face goes serious, contemplative again. “No,” he decides. “I do want to talk about it. I'm not really that traumatized over it, to be honest. I was just really shocked. I didn’t see it coming, although maybe I should have.”

“What happened?” Kyuhyun asks.

The story unfolds between sips of broth and chewing of sprouts. Mimi went over to Calvin’s for their weekly date – moved to Fridays since exam prep finished – and when he got there Calvin said they had to talk. He said that when they had been together during exam time, he thought they were a good match, but once they didn’t have the tests to worry about anymore it seemed like they didn’t have that much in common after all. He said that it was too hard trying to date someone secretly, never mind someone who went to a different school, and now that they were no longer going to the hagwon together they had to go out of their way to see each other at all.

“He said that it just wasn’t worth it,” Mimi says, impressively dry-eyed, Kyuhyun thinks. “He said that we didn’t really have enough in common to even be friends, and that trying to date in really tough circumstances despite that was stupid.”

 _So he was using you to help him pass the exams, and then he dumped you on your head once you couldn’t help him anymore,_ Kyuhyun doesn’t say. For all he knows, it might not be true. Maybe Calvin was being genuine when he told Mimi that he didn’t notice they had nothing in common until exams finished. _Uh huh. Right._ Anyway, there’s no point in making Mimi feel worse than he already does.

“He was gentle about it at least,” Mimi says. “He just said that, in the end, all I ever talk about is school and you, and he needs someone whose interests are more _diverse_.” That last part doesn’t get away without a hint of bitterness that’s totally out of character for him, and Kyuhyun feels his heart break a little.

“Me, huh?” he says, and Mimi blushes a little, reaching out and swatting him on the arm.

“You’re my best friend,” he says. “I love you more than anyone else in the world. Of course I’m gonna talk about you.”

Kyuhyun processes this.

“Let’s go to bed now,” he says. “I’ll get Ahra-noona to make you pancakes in the morning.”

“User,” Mimi accuses. “She’s not your servant, you know.”

Kyuhyun shrugs.

 

When the light goes out in Kyuhyun’s room, they’re lying on Kyuhyun’s double bed together. Mimi is curled up on his side, tracing invisible patterns against the wall and Kyuhyun is flat on his back, one hand resting on his chest, one dangled over the edge of the bed where he let it go limp after turning off the lamp.

“Do you love him?” Kyuhyun asks the ceiling.

“Hmm?” Mimi murmurs. “Who?”

“Calvin. Do you love him? _Did_ you love him?”

“No.” Absolutely no hesitation with that answer. No pause. He didn’t even have to think about it.

“That’s good,” Kyuhyun says, feeling happiness swell inside him, stemming from his heart and threatening to grow flowers in his mouth and choke him.

Rolling onto his side and inching forward, he slips an arm gently over Mimi’s waist, fingers tightening over his own lumpy sweater, face all but pressed into Mimi’s hair, dark and thick and smelling of the unlikely combination of cherry wood and mangoes.

“He doesn’t deserve you,” Kyuhyun whispers against the back of his neck, and Mimi’s hand comes up to rest over his, mirroring the way they’d stood on the night of Mimi’s first date with Calvin all those months ago. So much wasted time. So many new possibilities.

It’d barely even enough to be called a _spark_ of courage that propels Kyuhyun on; he’s been running on pure protective outrage and love since he saw Mimi crying on his couch. It’s so simple, so he does it: he presses his lips gently against Mimi’s neck, just where hair borders on skin, and moves with the shiver it elicits as he whispers against the place where he kissed, “He really doesn’t deserve you.”

Mimi doesn’t pull away. Aside from that one small shiver, the only recognition he displays of the kiss is the tightening of his hand over Kyuhyun’s. Confident, Kyuhyun presses another kiss to his neck, just under his ear, and soaks in the soft sigh he gets in response.

“Kuixian…”

“Sleep, Mimi,” Kyuhyun says to him, softly, in no way bent on pushing him further than this. “It’s okay.”

But Mimi doesn’t sleep. Ever so carefully he rolls over, sure to stay within the confines of Kyuhyun's embrace, so that they’re face to face, dark eyes staring into dark eyes.

“Why?” Mimi asks softly, reaching his hand out to touch Kyuhyun’s chest, near his heart. Kyuhyun tightens his grasp on Mimi's waist and leans his face against his collarbones. His skin, so tempting. He kisses him there, then his throat, his jaw, his cheek. Mimi’s arm slides around him and his fingers press into Kyuhyun’s back.

“I just want you to know that I love you,” Kyuhyun tells him, and then he finally kisses him. Mimi is unmoving against the firm pressure of his mouth. Kyuhyun leans back, rests his lips against his throat and sighs. “I love you.” And then he kisses him again.

This time, Mimi kisses back.


End file.
